Archive for February 28th, 2009

So, we went to the public library’s warehouse book clearout this afternoon. Not a bad haul, either. Everything was a quarter, so we picked up 39 books … and one Star Trek jigsaw puzzle.

The books are a pretty diverse lot; my 10-year-old son grabbed a pile of books on space, war, early man and other things involving weaponry. My 7-year-old daughter managed to find every book on ponies and puppies, and my 5-year-old stuck to his plan going in: A Batman book. Which he found. Unfortunately, it’s the picture-book story of Batman Returns, which features Danny DeVito’s Penguin in his long underwear. This sparked a lot of 5-year-old potty talk around the coffee table afterward.

The puzzle was for me. Check it out. I remember this; I think I might have had it back when it came out, late 70s or so. Not that I was a big puzzle kid, despite many attempts to stimulate my mental growth via strategic educational gift-giving. I wanted the Micronauts, I got the Micronauts jigsaw puzzle.

Now, though, I think this might be fun for me and the kids to tinker with. It’s only 200 pieces, or so it says … on the side of the box, it says “Over 200 pieces,” which doesn’t inspire my confidence. And the odds are against all the pieces actually being there.

My one question, though, is this: what is this image showing? My daughter asked why there were cupcakes on Star Trek. Look, and you’ll see the cupcake, along with the weird neon cauliflower tree. And what happened to their insignia? And why is Captain Kirk so … dainty? Actually, he looks less like William Shatner and more like a young George W. Bush, which is kind of creepy.